Valerio Berruti's 'More than kids' at Palazzo Reale, Milan

Valerio Berruti's exhibition 'More than kids' at Palazzo Reale in Milan presents sculptures and installations that address childhood, migration, climate catastrophe, and war. The centerpiece is 'Don't let me wrong', an eight-meter-tall aluminum bust of a girl with pigtails in the courtyard, which contains an interior accessible to visitors screening Berruti's short film of 800 drawings set to music by Daddy G of Massive Attack. Other works include 'A safe place' (2025), a fiberglass and cement diptych showing children swimming upside-down with life preservers, evoking migrant survival; 'Nel nome del padre' (2024), forty-one kneeling girl sculptures in a dark room awaiting an order that never comes, with a forty-second girl refusing to give it; 'La Giostra di Nina', a carousel with birds instead of horses, accompanied by Ludovico Einaudi's soundtrack; and 'Three (parts of) me' (2025), three aluminum girls sitting on a steel base inspired by a Japanese haiku about three inner spirits. Curator Nicolas Bellario describes Berruti as a director who evokes emotions. Berruti states that art must be a reflection on ourselves, extending a hand to the viewer, and that aesthetics cannot be separated from ethics: 'Who has a voice must use it to improve the world.' The exhibition runs at Palazzo Reale in Milan.